Senate Democrats have rolled out the reform agenda designed to save money now and improve the sustainability of state government in the future.

Sen. Brown: "Clearly the goal here is to not only deliver a better quality outcome at a lesser cost, but also when we're facing a big budget shortfall to figure out if we can narrow that number of that shortfall."

Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown joined Senators Jim Hargrove and Nick Harper in rolling out the reform agenda Democrats in the Senate will be pursuing this session. For the past two months, Hargrove and Harper have been examining auditor reports, past cost saving reforms and reforms that if adopted have the potential to save the state millions of dollars in this and future budgets.

Sen Hargrove: “We have a list of really significant things we’re going to take on this session that will have some amount of savings in this biennium, but then will, you know, increase many fold in future biennia’s.”

Hargrove says that list will include strengthening the mechanism used in identifying fraud and abuse in the Medicaid system, streamlining the permitting process without impacting environmental standards and increasing student achievement by focusing on cost effective chances.